The patient was transferred to HCMC from a hospital in Tien Giang province in the Mekong Delta.
During the trip, she developed breathing difficulties and cold extremities and was admitted to Ho Chi Minh City Children’s Hospital, Nguyen Minh Tien, the hospital’s deputy director, said on Thursday.
Three days before the trip, the girl vomited three to four times, occasionally had yellow stools, ate poorly and suffered from persistent fever.
Tien stated that the girl had tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect that was discovered after birth but not further investigated. Imaging diagnostics confirmed peritonitis due to perforation of a hollow organ, sepsis and septic shock.
Doctors performed emergency surgery and removed her intestines for examination.
They found that the girl’s stomach was greatly enlarged and a hard mass measuring approximately 30 x 20 cm was causing the perforation. The surgical team removed a large amount of hair, straw fibers and threads from the stomach and sutured the perforation.
After the operation, the girl was monitored in the intensive care unit.
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The fibrous mass was surgically removed from the stomach of an eight-year-old girl from Tien Giang Province. Photo courtesy of HCMC Children’s Hospital |
Her mother reported that the girl often swallowed hair, fibers, straw, toothbrush bristles, and pine needles. The family had noticed this behavior on several occasions and tried to prevent it. Since they occasionally saw the child excrete these materials in her stool, they did not pay much attention to it.
“The child and his family will undergo psychological examination and counseling,” Tien said.
The habit of eating hair that led to her intestinal obstruction is due to Rapunzel syndrome, named after the long-haired princess from Grimm’s fairy tales. People with this condition have a compulsion to eat hair.
Because hair cannot be digested like food, it accumulates in the stomach or small intestine to form a mass, sometimes accompanied by a long tail of hair.
The cause of the syndrome is not fully understood, but may be related to intellectual disabilities, psychiatric disorders, psychological trauma, extreme stress or iron deficiency.
Doctors advise parents and caregivers to help children avoid this habit by closely observing the child’s behavior to detect any abnormalities early and working with healthcare professionals to limit hair eating and support the child’s psychological well-being.
